For at that moment had come the announcement of the name they had on their lips.  Beatrice’s exclamation was made in a very subdued voice, but she moved slightly in her chair, and it was not within her resources to subdue the glister of her dark eyes and the warmth softly expanding upon her cheek.  Mrs. Birks floated towards her nephew with airs of rightly-tuned welcome; she could not, of course, make much of him, but her very familiarity made graceful claim to a share in his glory.  Wilfrid was sensibly changed during the years we have allowed to pass silently by.  To begin with, he had grown a beard.  His health seemed finally to have established itself on a sound basis; his cheeks were growing sunny, and he showed the proportions of a very complete man.  At the present moment, his consciousness of regards fixed upon him heightened his colour; his fine eyes danced in light; he checked a smile, and spoke sparingly here and there.  One part of his nature revelled in the joy of this foretaste of distinction; he had looked forward to it, had laboured for it, its sweetness was beyond all telling.  Triumph had been his aim as a schoolboy; he held it fitting that as a man he should become prominent amongst his fellows.  This of politics was the easiest way.  To be sure, he told himself that it was a way he would once have sneered at, that it was to rub shoulders with men altogether his inferiors in culture, that, had he held to the ideals of his youth, a longer, a wearier course would have been his, and the chance of a simpler, nobler crown.  But he had the gift of speech, and by an effort could absorb himself as completely in blue-books as in the pages of historian or poet.  An hour such as this was the first of his rewards.

Two there were in this assembly who turned their eyes upon him with adoration which could scarcely have fallen short of Wilfrid’s utmost demands.  They were his cousins, Minnie and Patty Rossall.  The twins were ‘out,’ very sweet girls, still too delicate in health, shadows of each other.  Had they regarded Wilfrid as a mere mortal, both would have been dying for love of him; as it was they drooped before him the veiled eyes of worshippers; a word from him made their pulses tingle blissfully throughout the day.  Such was their mutual love, that each schemed to win his kindness for the other, his brotherly kindness, for they never thought, had never dared to think, of anything else.  Wilfrid was very gracious to them both.

He shook hands with Beatrice, but neither spoke.  After a few words with Mrs. Baxendale, he passed on to other ladies.  Wilfrid’s manner was now all that could be desired in a young man who, destined to succeed in politics, would naturally make a figure in society.  He was pliant, he struck the note of good-breeding, he was unsurpassed in phrasing; with ladies who chose to be ‘superior,’ he could find exactly the right tone, keeping clear of pedantry, yet paying her with whom he spoke the compliment of